David Rodríguez-Solás

David Rodríguez-Solás (Ph.D., The Graduate Center, CUNY; B.A, M.A., Universidad de Granada) specializes in modern and contemporary Spanish and Catalan theater, cultural memory, and visual and performance studies. He is the author of Performing the Transition to Democracy. Theater and Performance in 1970s Spain (Routledge, 2025), in which he examines troupes, plays, festivals, performative practices, and audiences active at the beginning of the transition to democracy. His first book, Teatros nacionales republicanos: la Segunda República y el teatro clásico español (Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2014), is a study of the theatrical practices of Margarita Xirgu, García Lorca’s La Barraca and Misiones Pedagógicas, and their agency in the building of a national identity in the newly established republic. He has been published in journals including Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, History and Memory, and Bulletin of Spanish Studies. He has guest edited and co-edited special issues of Romance Quarterly, Talía. Revista de Estudios Teatrales, and RAEI.

Prof. Rodríguez-Solás has lectured at both national and international conferences such as the Modern Language Association, the American Comparative Literature Association, the International Federation for Theatre Research, and Oxford’s Forum for Iberian Studies. He held visiting positions at both US and Canadian universities and was a fellow at the Madrid Institute for Advanced Study.

Contemporary Spanish and Catalan theater, literature and cultural studies.
Theater and Performance Studies.
Memory studies.
Cultural history.

Books

1. Performing the Transition to Democracy. Theater and Performance in 1970s Spain. New York: Routledge, 2025. 

2. Teatros nacionales republicanos: la Segunda República y el teatro clásico español. Madrid; Frankfurt am Main: Iberoamericana; Vervuert, 2014.

Finalist of the 2015 Leandro Fernández de Moratín Book Award for Theater Studies. Asociación de Directores de Escena (Spanish Stage Directors Association)

Edited Collections

• A Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in the Iberian Peninsula. Part II, vols. 3 and 4, eds. Nicolás Fernández Medina, Ana Corbalán, Noemí de Haro García, Leonor Oliveira, and David Rodríguez Solás. Edited volumes under contract with Brill. 
• Teatro, memoria y prácticas del recuerdo, ed. David Rodríguez-Solás, special issue of Talía. Revista de Estudios Teatrales, vol. 4, 2022.
• Anglophone Theatre and Performance Practices on the Spanish Stage, eds. Isabel Guerrero Llorente, Verónica Rodríguez Morales, and David Rodríguez-Solás, special issue of Alicante Journal of English Studies / Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses (RAEI), vol. 37, 2022.
• Chile, eds. Alexandra Ripp, Mauricio Barria, Anne García-Romero, Pía Gutiérrez, David Rodríguez-Solás, and Adam Versényi, special issue of Imagined Theatres, vol. 6, 2022.
• Marginality in Spanish Theater, eds. Esther Fernández and David Rodríguez-Solás, double special issue of Romance Quarterly, vol. 65 num. 3, 2018; vol. 66, num. 1, 2019.

Articles and Book Chapters

• “Performance in Contemporary Times: Processes, Community and Audience.” The Routledge Hispanic Studies Companion to Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Spain: Ideas, Practices, Imagining, ed. by L. Elena Delgado and Eduardo Ledesma. New York: Routledge, 2025.
• “Cortocircuitar la historia: Shock: el cóndor y el puma y el desbordamiento del teatro documental.” Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies, vol. 27, 2023, pp. 181-194. 
• “Testing the Audience’s Judgement: Please, Continue (Hamlet), by Roger Bernat and Yan Duyvendak.” Daring Adaptations, Creative Failures and Experimental Performances in Iberian Theatre, ed. by María Chouza-Calo, Esther Fernández, and Jonathan Thacker. Liverpool University Press, 2023, pp. 251-265.
• "Dissident Bodies: Theatrical Counter-Memories of Spain’s Transition to Democracy.” History & Memory, vol. 33, no. 1, 2021, pp. 142-170.
• “La resignificación de los márgenes del teatro independiente: Oratorio, del Teatro Estudio Lebrijano.” Marginality in Spanish Theater. Special issue of Romance Quarterly, vol. 66, num. 1, 2019, pp. 17-29.
• “Marginalized Practices in Spanish Theater, part 1: Introduction.” Co-authored with Esther Fernández. Marginality in Spanish Theater. Special issue of Romance Quarterly, vol. 65, num. 4, 2018, pp. 175-179.
• “Dramaturgas del siglo XXI.” Mujer, creación y gestión teatral en España (2000-2018). Special issue of Don Galán. Revista de investigación teatral, vol. 8, 2018.
• “Occupying Las Ramblas: Ocaña’s Political Performances in Spain’s Democratic Transition.” Theatre Research International, vol. 43, num. 1, 2018, pp. 83-98.
• “Dagoll Dagom’s No hablaré en clase, a Postdramatic Response to Francoism.” Theatre and Dictatorship in the Luso-Hispanic World, ed. Diego Santos Sánchez. New York: Routledge, 2018, pp. 140-154.
• “‘I haven’t done anything wrong!’ Melodrama and Victimization in Las 13 rosas/ 13 Roses (2007) and La voz dormida/ The Sleeping Voice (2011).” Studies in Spanish & Latin American Cinemas, vol. 13, num. 3, 2016, pp. 303-317.
• Review article. “El espacio de la crítica, el lugar de la utopía: el teatro de Juan Mayorga.” Iberoamericana, vol. 62, 2016, pp. 225-234.
• “La Barraca, 1933: El giro lopiano de García Lorca.” Anuario Lope de Vega. Texto, Literatura, Cultura, vol. 22, 2016, pp. 200-216.
• “The New Angulo el Malo’s Company: Misiones Pedagógicas and the Teatro del Pueblo.” Anales de la Literatura Española Contemporánea (ALEC), vol. 38, 2013, pp. 785-812.
• “Remembered and Recovered: Bethune and The Canadian Blood Transfusion Unit in Málaga, 1937.” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, vol. 36, num. 1, 2012, pp. 83-100.
• “La teatralización de la escritura en El chico de la última fila, de Juan Mayorga.” Carlos Dimeo y José Ramón González, eds. La narrativa en el teatro / El teatro en la narrativa. Lublin (Poland): La Campana Sumergida Editorial, 2012, pp. 51-62.
• “Pedro Crespo en el ruedo: El alcalde de Zalamea y la identidad republicana en la plaza de las Ventas.” Gestos: Revista de teoría y práctica del teatro hispánico, vol. 49, 2010, pp. 160-70.
• “A la vanguardia del libro ilustrado: Terencio (Lyón, 1493) y La Celestina (Burgos, 1499)” Bulletin of Spanish Studies, vol. 86, num. 1, 2009, pp. 1-17.

Span 310.  Advanced Language through Culture

Span 312. Oral and Written Expression 

Span 415. Culture and Civilization of Spain

Span 431. Contemporary Theater in Spain and Catalonia

Span 436. Fighting Fascism: the Spanish Civil War

Span 597. Literary & Cultural Theory in the Luso-Hispanic World

Span 697. Practicing Spanish Cultural Studies

Span 797. Federico García Lorca

Span 797. Images of Liberation: Spanish Transition to Democracy